You are probably right Jen, they are very similar looking fig-like leaves. The Calophyllums grow along the beach in NQ and often have staghorns in their branches hanging over the salt water. Hopefully these are some images:

Gav those predictions or estimates only come true if some of the more fanciful modeling is correct.
So far SLR is little different than it has been for the last 100 years, so I’d put my money on 8 inches or 20mm by 2100. Just like the last 100 years.
The temp models are hopeless and therefore that will wreck the SL models as well. Let’s keep an eye on observations and real data not silly models.

Happy 2013 everyone,
1st of Jan is an absolute cracker in the MIA. Just glorious.
The summer crops and the plethora of wetland species are having a good run.
We have a very amusing flock of water fowl that have decided to make our house dam home.
Our house pets are rather bemused (especially the cat).

Thanks Debbie and the same to you and everyone. You’re not supposed to have weather like that any more. It’s pretty nice here too this morning, with Lyrebirds, Turkeys, Pheasants, Custardheads, Hares, Satin Bowerbirds etc around the house, scratching up the lawn. Don’t have the heart to chase ‘em.

Here’s a little mickey taking which brings a smile….. it’s on the US ABC Nature and Environment titled ” Climate: Warmer, More Extreme , and Get Used to it.”
Doug Brockman says:
The new weather is much more exciting than the old weather which, admit it, was decidedly boring.
Mack says:
Yes Doug, all weather from now on is unprecedented, we do live in new and exciting times.

If Doug wants extreme…well, that’s all the time. But if he wants extreme with serial hurricanes on the east coast where Sandy went, he can’t go past 1954:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Atlantic_hurricane_season
For a single east coast storm, nothing beats 1635 and 1821, but 1954 was one hell of a year.

I was talking about the east coast, but worse things have happened elsewhere in the North Atlantic region. While Galveston in 1900 remains the worst disaster in US history, with 8000+ dead, it’s likely that nothing in recorded Atlantic history can top the Great Hurricane of 1780, which left over 20000 dead in the Caribbean. (The same year and month of October produced two other deadly hurricanes in the region.)

Recent storms and hurricanes in the Gulf and Atlantic have been horrific also. Katrina was a killer, and Wilma in 2005 was a scary 882 hPa, though not nearly as intense as 1935’s Labor Day at landfall. All of which would indicate that humans need reliable energy, safe water supply, sensible coastal development and solid infrastructure. But don’t listen to me – I’m a tea party redneck who wouldn’t know a nuance if it bit him on the backside.

Happy New Year everybody! (Even the warmies, who are probably reading all this surreptitiously.)

Robert,
Doug was on our side taking the mickey along with me. Robert, with only ,it seems, Gavin about ,you might have become a little trigger-happy. I’d hate to be an alarmist walking in here on the receiving end of that blunderbus shot However, good shooting.

If you can wade through the climate propaganda swamp when trying to find out simple facts about New York’s geography, you may eventually arrive at its official altitude, which is 6 feet. Sydney, by contrast, has an official altitude of 25 feet. These are just factoids, of course, but you do wonder why, in a hurricane-prone region, someone would use rubble to build an urbanisation like Battery Park City right near sea level, and one which creates a choke in the Hudson River.

I wonder if all the silly blather about sea levels isn’t meant to cover a certain amount of embarrassment. Few people are as convinced of their own cleverness as New Yorkers. Could these uber-clever urbanites be responsible for some very unclever development, involving millions of humans and billions of dollars?

Of course, drastic SLR only happens in movies and “models”. It never stops people like Goldman Sachs building by the water’s edge. Like Sydney and the Maldives and Kiribati, everything in NY is where it always was, even that former swamp, Brooklyn. But do these people really think they can stop surges and floods in their city by crippling the whole developed West?

Hi Jennifer,
I think that your outperforming the BOM seasonal forecast for Qld ‘on a shoestring,’ using off-the-shelf AI, was a great accomplishment. Without a doubt, you are the top person in Australia in the field of evidence-based environmental policy. I hope that you have another successful New Year.

I have made a few comments on the previous thread about my experiences at Deltoid, which were enlightening to say the least. The thread in question there claimed that several graphs showed sea level rise to be accelerating. I genuinely couldn’t see that and posed a few questions which of course were howled down. So, I’ve decided to summarise here for your thoughts. I apologise for the length of this post.

One of my questions related to SD’s issue – can anyone offer an example of a real world impact from AGW derived SLR? Now, that’s a bit of a loaded question because no-one denies that sea levels rise and fall, so clearly there are impacts on coastlines over long enough periods.

But the thread there seemed to be largely focussing on the effects of CO2 which as far as I could tell, they seemed to think were being observed with a higher degree of confidence in the past 100 years. So, my question was more to the effect, what impacts can we see from 100 years of SLR on the Australian coastline. No-one offered any. So I asked for any example worldwide.

The only concrete examples were Florida’s problems with sea level, and the impact of Hurricane Sandy. I agree that Florida is being affected by SLR but that coastline has many confounding factors, so I find it hard without extensive research to see how much of that might be caused by AGW derived SLR.

Which brought us to Sandy. I asked a simple question. For AGW derived SLR to have exacerbated Sandy’s effects, we would need to know the actual sea level at the time of its arrival. So, what was it? I asked this on the basis that as far as I can see, that is the critical value. For example, if it had hit at low tide, the effects would have been less.

Again, nothing concrete in reply apart from a lot of insults. I was told that because there has been SLR obviously the impact was greater. OK… but still, isn’t the actual sea level relative to the land at the time of Sandy’s landfall the real issue? It seems that’s what they were arguing by claiming that the higher sea level was what exacerbated Sandy’s storm surge. What is actual sea level at the time if it isn’t the tide height? I don’t care what the sea level actually was when Sandy struck in this context – it was what it was and it includes the surge. But for it to have been higher than it otherwise might have been we need to see what was predicted for that time and date.

Was that value significantly higher than a high tide could have reached in the past? If not, then where’s the impact? After all, we cannot predict when a storm will hit, so any storm surge’s maximum impact is most likely at the highest high tide, surely? That’s the worst effect we could get.

Thus, if the predicted high tide for that time and place was substantially higher than previous high tides say 50 years ago (remember, it is the accelerating SLR that is the problem – if the tide height is a little bit higher, then that could be ‘normal’ SLR or even ground subsidence), perhaps we can argue for an additional effect from AGW derived SLR.

Does that make sense, or am I barking mad? The Deltoids say the latter.

Just from curiosity, I did some research. I haven’t enough time to do that seriously, so what follows may be completely incorrect.

First, tide heights at The Battery are calculated with reference to what is known as Mean Lower Low Water (MLLW). This is the datum point used with reference to the official Benchmark, and I’ll assume the Benchmark is on the land (well, it is in fact).

MLLW is the average of the lower low water height of each tidal day observed over the National Tidal Datum Epoch. The National Tidal Datum Epoch is the period over which a mean is set. The two most recent are the modern one which was set in the period 1983-2001 and the superceded one which covered 1960-1978. So right there, we have our 50 years.

For the prediction or measurement of tides, we use MLLW as the zero point, so in the data, it appears as zero. However, for the 1960-1978 period it was set at 936mm above the Benchmark and for the period 1983-2001 it was 1002mm. You can see therefore that in terms of these means, there is an increase of some 66mm. Anyways, without going into too much detail, what I did was to find the various tidal datums and adjusted for the MLLW figure. That is, Mean High Water today is 1443mm. Adding on the MLLW value of 1002mm gives us an actual value of 2445mm above the Benchmark (land). Does that make sense?

So, what are our figures?

We can use Mean Higher High Water, Mean High Water and Mean Low Water.

MHHW 2496 2543
MHW 2393 2445
MLW 1003 1065

Figures in absolute millimetres above the benchmark, 60-78 first and 83-01 second.

In this case, the tide of the day at the time of landfall was the High Water one, not the Higher High Water one. What was that predicted to be? 1444mm. Add our adjustment, and we get 2446mm.

You will see that is 53mm higher than the 1960-1978 mean, but bang on the money for the 1983-2001 mean. So, right there, we could argue for around 53mm of effect from SLR. However, the 2393mm number is a mean, and we can assume some tides were higher than that in that period, so our number MAY be less than 53mm. Also, the land there is subsiding and I have no idea if that’s been adjusted for in the Benchmark values. I’ll assume it has been, but maybe not. So, our SLR effect seems to be somewhere between 0mm and 55mm. Let’s settle on that 53mm number.

Hurricane Sandy got just on an 2 extra inches of sea level with which to devastate New York compared to if it had struck in 1960. This does not seem a frightfully large number and seems not to support the idea of an increasingly worrisome trend due to AGW derived SLR. It DOES however show that sea level relative to land at The Battery IS rising and should be planned for.

What do you think? Remember, I make no claim I am right, I also note I have no real idea what I am talking about. But the IDEA seems sound to me. If you can quickly and easily shoot me down, please do. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve completely cornswaggled myself

Makes sense to me Graeme. Only 2″ in 50 years! And that would be mostly land settlement. Well, well! Doltoids are claiming a greater SLR but that is mostly due to adjustments and the East Coast US sinking. Morner explains those adjustments:

Graeme,
I don’t blame you for wanting to validate your thinking.
Last time I looked (over a day ago after I read Cohenite’s comment here)… nothing those deltoid people said either answered your perfectly reasonable questions and/or disproved your observations (or spangled’s).
Hurricane Sandy was a hurricane. They have had them before. They have actually had worse ones before. There may have been a 2″ difference in SL to last century when the last severe hurricane hit there.
SO?????
Don’t you think perhaps that they may have cornered you into arguing about and worrying about not very much at all?
The article you linked (I think?) that JW commented on here contained far more useful information about what was responsible for the vast majority of the damage…..and it wasn’t that PERHAPS (bold) 2″ of SLR that they’re all going on and on and on and on about.
As I have said before here….anyone who has spent any time living on the coast knows that coastline infrastructure is vulnerable to the power of the ocean.
Humans like to build permanent habitat on the coastline because when it’s not being an uncontrollable beast… it is a very pleasant environment.
However… despite all the prattle about ACO2 and SLR… coastlines and estuaries have always and will always be subject to movement, inundation, erosion and subsidence.
That is actually normal!
The only time it isn’t is when other natural phenomenon like earthquakes and volcanoes force the land back against or into the ocean OR (bold) when us very smart humans build clever mitigation infrastructure!!!!
So frankly, even though it’s very funny to read, those deltoid people are screeching mostly academic BS!!!!!
I congratulate you (and spangled and chameleon) on your persistence in trying to talk some common sense with them but I really don’t think they’re interested in anything other than preaching the CAGW religion.

I wouldn’t waste my time arguing with them, they don’t seem to like facts. If anyone wants to believe that Sandy was a powerful hurricane and the small NATURAL SLR made a difference that’s their choice.

The fact is the last thing you would try is a reduction in co2 emissions to combat SLR. Best bet is to copy the Dutch and use adaptation to combat any future SLR.
It’s far cheaper and you get a proven immediate result. Even Flannery admitted as much to Andrew Bolt when he conceded that it would take centuries or perhaps 1000 years to change the temp via a reduction in co2 emissions.

BTW THAT’s IF THE ENTIRE WORLD STOPPED EMITTING CO2 TODAY. So the entire argument is infantile and stupid as far as I’m concerned.

When people feel sanctified by their Environmentalism, they no longer feel a need to practice Conservation. How can Leo di Caprio jet about the globe just to catch extra New Year’s Eve partying? Because he has been sanctified by his enviro-posturing. Gaia has blessed Leo, and granted him dispensation. How can New Yorkers justify dumping rubble and dredged sand into their Hudson River, narrowing it by 700 feet near its mouth? Goddess Gaia winked, and told them those old conservation rules were only meant for the hicks out in flyover country. Moreover, the odd natural disaster is good for the Snake Oil industry.

Conservation for our Green Betters is like morality for a Borgia pope.

“I think you are overcomplicating things now.
Your question in essence is a simple one.
Did the extra two or eight inches of sea level rise since the seventies made all the difference on top of the very high tide?
What if there was a low tide at the time of the storm instead, would the extra few inches still cause more damage?”

That sort of ISN’T the question, and of course it’s really neither here nor there. But I go off on these tangents at times because I find the investigation fun and enlightening. Some others in recent times are “what is air pressure” and “why does a disc of earth’s diameter intercept the same amount of light as a hemisphere”. Simple on the face of it, but the things I found out.

In this case, the question ISN’T really how much the SLR sits on top of the high tide. It is, rather, was the high tide at that time any higher than at any other time. Because the SLR in the graphs is a MEAN value of a RANGE of sea levels (ie tides). So, regardless of high tide or low tide or in-between, how far outside of that range was the sea level at the time of the storm. That’s a more subtle question to my mind.

If the range of tides say 50 years ago was from A to B, then regardless of the tide status if the predicted height was within that range when sandy struck then SLR had no impact because the event was always possible.

Sure the actual level may have been slightly higher than the same tide without SLR, but if it is within the range then there has been no impact above what was always possible.

I’m sorry but unless I completely misunderstood the whole thing, you are wrong.

You introduce something that cannot have any relevance on this matter, namely:“range of tides say 50 years” Unless the gravitational pull of the Moon and the Sun changed, and I did not hear it mentioned, the range of tides today are as they were not only fifty but a thousand years ago.
The timing of the storm is irrelevant in a way, it could have happened at low mid or high tide.

Therefore only the SLR can be an accentuating factor.

Sorry but your reasoning is a voluminous one, I may have misinterpreted it along the way.

The fact remains that the tides themselves have not changed or very very little if any, could not have for the reasons I outlined.

JW, thanks for your comments. As I said, I may be completely wrong-headed. Anyways, you have again misunderstood what I am driving at.

Let me try to explain a different way.

The sea level that is shown on graphs is the monthly mean sea level over time. Now, mean sea level (MSL) is, according to the definition, “the arithmetic mean of hourly heights observed over the National Tidal Datum Epoch”. And of course, the hourly heights will be different over the course of a day, depending on the tide. So tide height is, in effect, the sea level at any point on a coastline. So the ACTUAL sea level at a time of day on any given day is not necessarily the same as the MSL – it can be higher or lower.

Now, over a period of time, you must have a maximum high tide (discounting storm surges etc) and a minimum low tide. You will also have a mean for each. These are the figures I showed earlier.

Let’s use some arbitrary figures for a period of time, let’s say from Jan 1 1960 until Dec 31 1978. That period incorporates some major tidal cycles so we should get a representative range of heights.

Min Low Tide Height – 800mm
Max High Tide Height – 2600mm

Mean Low Tide – 1000mm
Mean High Tide – 2500mm

When I say range, I mean the range of these values. These are the heights of the sea for those tides relative to a land based benchmark.

Min to Max is 800mm-2600mm
Mean Min to Max is 1000mm-2500mm

This is the range of possible tide levels, and hence, sea levels. You’ll see that MSL is somewhere in the middle-ish.

Now, if Sandy rocks up in 2012 and causes a surge, how can we deduce what effect sea level had on that surge? Well, to my way of thinking, it depends on the height of the tide. If it occurred at dead low tide, and that was, adjusted for the current period, let’s say 1050mm, we can easily see that the tide was 50mm higher than the mean was in the period 1960-1978. So in effect, we had an extra 50mm or so of sea level for the storm to play with than if the sea level hadn’t risen.

There are a couple of ways of looking at that. Because that tide height is NOT outside the range of either the mean low to mean high, or the min low to max high for 1960-1978, then even though SLR DID affect the storm surge, it was not outside the range of possible surge heights that we could have experienced back then. So realistically, we did not experience anything we could not have theoretically experienced at any time since 1960.

On the other hand, if it happened at high tide, and that tide was 2650mm, then it is beyond either range, and we can clearly say we had an effect of an extra 50mm sea level that we did not experience in 1960-1978. therefore, SLR did play a part, albeit quite small.

That is, disregarding other confounding factors such as land subsidence, local changes in geography etc.

No argument from me John,
Any rise is clearly not significant.
That’s not what intrigued me about Graeme’s last comment.
Perhaps it reads differently than he intended?
It certainly looks different to his Bolt for PM comments that I read at deltoid.

Debbie, what I meant was that more than likely all I’ve done is show that there has been sea level rise and it did enhance Sandy’s impact. Which is what they argued at Deltoid. I wasn’t trying to disprove whether there has been SLR, rather just question to what extent it might have contributed.

What I wrote above makes sense to me, but perhaps it’s glaringly obvious to everyone else. I just don’t know enough about tides, cycles, ranges and so on – it just seemed obvious to me that it’s the actual tide height that should be the deciding factor.

But what I have suggested ties in with Spangled Drongo’s concerns. For example if the mean sea level at the Gold Coast has risen say 140mm over 70 years, you’d be hard pressed to see that at any old moment, because the sea level is the tide height and that varies continuously. MSL is not an actual real world property, it’s a statistical construction.

What you MIGHT see though would be low water that is not as low, or high water that is higher. But imagine IF due to a range of factors highest high water over that time was set say 50 years ago?

You may find that generally speaking, high water today is no higher than it was 50 years ago, however MSL has risen.

So, observing high tides may not, in the shorter term, actually tell you what MSL is doing.

All of that said, I still have no idea how Wow at Deltoid could argue so strongly that tide height is not sea level. Tide heights are not MSL, but they ARE the local sea level at whatever time you care to check.

By the way, here’s another question which appears to me to be obvious, but is perhaps completely silly and obviously so to others.

When everyone talks about SLR and its impact, they always seem to argue as though the water is in something like a smooth sided container, let’s say a cylinder. So a SLR of say 5mm/yr means an increase of 50mm in 10 years or 500mm in 100 years. Now that would work in a cylinder, but in the real world?

As the sea rises, wouldn’t it spread out as well? The same volume, over greater area? Why should it continue to rise at the same rate? For example, at some point it may get high enough to spill over into a previously dry valley, or plain. That could be a very large valley or plain. And this must happen all over the world. Plus, the extra weight on the land would presumably press it down, possibly speeding the rate at which water spreads out.

Or is this spreading out effect likely to be too small to be noticeable?

Cylinder half full of cold water being warmed. Water level will increase as it heats, at presumably a uniform rate if our source of heat is constant.

Imagine at some point a small pocket in that wall. When the water level reaches that, it flows over into that pocket. What would be the effect on the rate of rise of the water level? I am not sure, it hurts my head to try to figure that one out.

Cylinder half full of cold water being warmed. Water level will increase as it heats, at presumably a uniform rate if our source of heat is constant.

Imagine at some point a small pocket in that wall. When the water level reaches that, it flows over into that pocket. What would be the effect on the rate of rise of the water level? I am not sure, it hurts my head to try to figure that one out.

GM: cause I’m extreemly handicapted while tryng to drive a new pc, os and larger monitor I must be so brief about my observations re later part of this thread.

Simply; stay focused on SL facts as described via msm and go back only a month or so in keeping up.

A quick review finds items like 3.2mm/y and the West Antaratic melt contribution to SLR. Any GLACIER MELT adds.

Stay with the climate research, not the the global conspiracy to undermine it. Mutual understandings and agreements exist now to help with SL data analysis from various measurement systems both old and new.

I sugest a look at the Panama Canal. SL on the Pacific side is about 20cm higher but only 50 km away from this station.

Gav, I don’t know how many times one has to say it, but SLR started around the time of Jane Austen and Napoleon Bonaparte. Open and common knowledge. I don’t know what currents or volcanic vents may be affecting some parts of Western Antarctica, but sea ice in the SH has been trending high in recent years. Open and common knowledge. I’m talking about the whole of Antarctica, not just some melty bits. Isn’t it good to know that things aren’t too bad?

I’m not saying the climate’s terrific, but it’s about as terrific as it gets. Just a bit of chilling back in the seventies had everybody squawking, so just enjoy this milder moment in the holocene while it lasts.

As for climate research…in the age of Publish or Perish, all the best geeks like to poo-poo any paper older than their iPhone. So why not get in early? That’s all a skeptic does.

Still waiting for your answer Gav, come on have a go. You post regularly here about the terrible state of the planet brought on by CAGW but won’t provide any solution to fix drought, floods, SLR, bushfires, lower the temp etc and you seem to want to provide us with the wonderful ( SARC) climate of 1750.

What’s your problem? You can regularly complain but never offer a solution, why? Strange.

Graeme,
It is an interesting question but JW is correct.
You are undermining your own argument by confusing rate and rise.
Essentially, if any SLR is not significantly affecting coastlines then SD has nailed the real problem.
There is rather a lot of OVER STATING (bold) the effect of any discernable SLR.
The argument over Sandy is a good example and the article you linked at deltoid (I think it was you?) explained the important contributors to the damage.
Any contribution from SLR and further any contribution from the ACO2 signal in SLR was NOT (bold) significant.
If they want to learn from the event, sooking about SLR is not the lesson.

Lomborg states on page 77 of “Cool It” that the IPCC estimate the total costs for the USA national protection and property abandonment for a 1 metre SLR ( more than 3 times what’s expected) at about 5 to 6 billion $ over this century.

This is tiddlywinks in dollar terms compered to trying to change the climate or SLR by reducing co2 emissions and you have a result once the work is completed.

Just imagine wasting endless trillions of dollars for many centuries and still not see a benificial change in temp or climate or SLR etc.
Of course you won’t change the climate or temp by a whisker, just see the blow out in co2 emissions since the Kyoto signing. The increase or blow out in emissions was about 58% i.e. a total fraud and con. Mostly from China, India etc and they won’t sign.

Remember this particular theoretical IPCC estimate is for a 1 metre SLR over this century, if you’d ever believe that load of SLR crap.
The IPCC official estimate is of course about 30 cm, but that 1 metre is a good guide for cheap sensible ADAPTATION.

Gavin,
Neville has already answered your question but I must say you are being highly obtuse.
NOBODY (bold) has claimed that SL has not altered or that humans have not affected their local environments.
The point of disagreement is the C bit in CAGW.
Many people, including Neville are questioning the costs involved in
a) attempts to prove that C bit and;
b) taxing to change the changing weather/climate.
The question is really very simple.
What do you think should be done to adapt to changing climate?
or alternatively:
Do you think that taxing CO2 emissions in Australia will have any practical mitigation effects?

Nev, that’s an interesting link to Ridley. I recall reading that Sir John Cowperthwaite, or some other post-war manager of HK affairs, very deliberately refused to gather economic data. If one looks at the nonsense of extrapolation, modelling etc in the fields of economics and climate, you can see the point.

Here’s one example. If you were a paid scholar and climate boffin in 1700, watching the advance of the glaciers, you would have made predictions for 2012 based on what had happened during the 1700s. You could have produced all kinds of calculations and extrapolations to prove that an ice age was inevitable by now. The Archduke was paying you for an opinion, and you would have been as unlikely as a modern Publish-or-Perish academic to give a sensible answer like: “How should I bloody know?”

Another example. If you had been observing sea-levels before the Napoleonic Wars, you would have had lots of stats and measurements to prove that higher levels by 1900 were impossible.

Nobody in the thirties thought there was a chance of a global cooling alarm just forty years later. Very few in the seventies – till that freak English heat of 1976 shook up the the CRU and the “ice man”, Hubert Lamb – thought we were heading into a warming crunch.

Intellectuals of all colours have trouble understanding that life is flux and that all trends come to an end. There is, of course, a great need for intellectuals and, above all, real scholars. But there is danger in putting too much faith in people who can collate, measure and calculate but who cannot, on the most elementary level, just THINK. We cannot delegate commonsense.

gavin, your last comment is stoopid, even for you.
Nova has more science eddication than you, as does our hostess. And Spencer is, well, a rocket scientist, meteorologist and accomplished academic. You are a neverwuzzer; not even a couldabeen.

Gav I never thought you would have the guts to even try and answer my challenge. Luke’s best attempt was perhaps nuclear could be an answer, but he also admitted it would be very difficult.

Simple maths dictates there is zero we can do to change the temp or climate because China and India etc are easily out stripping any savings in emissions the OECD could ever make.

You should read Lomborg’s book because he’s covered just about every scenario for the rest of the century.

The reduction of co2 path is a complete waste of time and money and can never make a scrap of difference. Just look at the Kyoto blow out of 58% more emissions and think of the idiocy and wasted billions $ to come via Kyoto 2. All for a zero return.
We should be using all our scarce borrowed money on new inventions, more R&D and adaptation to anything the weather/climate throws at us.

There will always be droughts , floods, fires, cyclones, tornadoes, SLR perhaps and sometimes dangerous coastal storm surges etc.
We should be planning for every one of the above events before it happens and not waste countless billions $ for a guaranteed zero return.

Because the deltoids were trying to discredit Humlum I googled to see if he has been mentioned recently and found this:http://www.troymedia.com/2012/12/08/un-chief-errs-again-on-climate-change/
Perhaps Graeme or Spangled can use it if they’re still arguing with them?
Gavin,
I do have to agree with hunter.
That was a bit of a silly comment.
You must give credence to the POLITICAL (bold) notion that there is white hat or good fairy science and black hat or evil witch science that is based on whom you work for?
Yet here you are commenting on Jen’s blog and you MUST (bold) be aware that there have been many attempts to discredit her work based on that same ridiculous notion.
One of the latest was that abysmal media watch attempt at character assassination.
BTW,
I think Nev has always said exactly that.

Debbie thanks for that link, so much common sense is heartening to read.
The UN chief’s comments are incredibly stupid and just proves what silly numbskulls we have running the planet’s affairs.
Where do we get these silly people from and why don’t more journos speak out when these fools sprout these clueless absurdities.

John is right Debbie. They are like a pack of rabid dogs and you have to give them nothing but the narrowest of parameters and if they don’t respond just come back later. I’ve finally got a couple of the more reasonable to agree that the surface of the geoid represents level ocean and am trying to proceed from there.

I am not holding out much hope and probably deluding myself but it is interesting.

Driving home I was pondering if he grasped the difference. Debbie picked it up.

His example involves heating water in a vessel.

Cylinder half full of cold water being warmed. Water level will increase as it heats, at presumably a uniform rate if our source of heat is constant.

Well the expansion rate is not linear but fairly constant with the application of heat until boiling point, for practical purposes we can say it’s constant.

What Graeme M confused is the rate of expansion and the rate of the rise of the water level in the cylinder, when
suddenly encountering a wider surface area, while the expansion rate remains the same the rise of level is slowed down.

This is the quandary with the claim of a uniform rate of SLR. (any rate) While the addition of extra water can be calculated by observed data or computer models, the claim of any distinct sea level rise like 2mm or 100mm is practically meaningless unless a very complex calculation is made taking into account the elevation of every bit of our planet.

And I’m sure when these people are talking about “Sea level rise of 10mm” they assume that all the world’s water and ice is contained in a vast cylindrical container with the lip at an even height.

That is not the case as we know, so once the sea level reaches low lying areas like Bangladesh the rise will inevitably slow down despite the supply of water is constant.

Like I said before the “expansion rate/ melt-water supply” may be constant we cannot say that the sea level rise will be linear so any claim of a rate of rise is bunkum.

Probably more than most people realise. What effectively happens at a huge river delta that frequently floods is that the land always remains slightly above SL. It “floats” similar to coral atolls. And it also grows in area with beautiful alluvial soil.

Yes JW & Spangled,
Of course.
Spangled was trying to explain the way water always aggressively seeks equilibrium to the deltoids when I stopped visiting.
They clearly weren’t getting it.
Also, if there is no alarming SLR in places like Bangladesh the whole hypothesis. . .including Graeme’s example. . . sort of falls over doesn’t it?

If we assume, that the melting of Antarctic ice and the glaciers is as predicted. I doubt it, but let it be.

If they use the change of rate of melting as a substitute for change of SLR rise up or down, I can accept that.
But that’s cheating.

I have seen many floods where the same amount of water caused enormous damage on one side of a hill because it had nowhere to go and piled up to ten feet, while on the other side it was nothing more than a bl..y nuisance.

I’m not arguing here about SLR one way or other but the use of terminology. One cannot speak of a uniform or should I say steady sea level rise on an uneven surface, it will fluctuate as low lying lands are inundated.

There are many below sea level areas now, that could be filled?
Not a good situation in any case, but why not be be clear what we are talking about?

No JW I wasn’t confused, I just used the wrong word. All I was posing is a simple question – if the water is rising in our hypothetical cylinder, what happens when it reaches our hypothetical pocket. To my mind, the rate at which the actual water level is climbing would be momentarily slowed. However, I didn’t mean anything significant from that thought, it was just an observation that I’ve never seen mentioned anywhere. It may have no real world effect at all.

As far as sea level in the real world at any particular place, that is just an average over time of all heights of all tides with variation removed ie they screen out fluctuations like storm surges, currents etc.

So all that happens is that a monthly mean of sea level, drawn from tide gauges, is then plotted. This is where we see the evidence of a sea level rise. The linear trend that they are fond of showing is just that, a linear trend of noisy data. The actual monthly means show substantial variation.

Just to qualify that comment,
remember I am a broad acre irrigator and I manage gravity fed irrigation.
I understand that the ocean behaves differently because of other variables but water will always follow the laws of gravity and SD is correct that it will do so aggressively.
Hope that helps?

By the way, that New York plot – it’s hard to tell from looking at it, but it seems to show SLR of 150 mm from 1960 to the present day, yet you’ll remember my calculation that indicated no more than 53 mm of actual rise in the particular tide I was investigating. I might dig some more into that, I am still curious, even if I am off up a blind alley.

Debbie, yes, SD’s observation does make sense. But it IS hard to argue that when we can see SLR in some tide gauge data and not in others. There must be some sort of local variables that affect what is happening. But I have always wondered about the point SD is making – if sea level is rising, why is it not visible in some places? I can imagine local variation having some short term effect, but if sea level is rising globally then those short term effects must eventually give way to the broader underlying trend. No way could it rise by 150-200mm globally and not at all in one place, surely.

Graeme,
go back and read what JW & SD & John S said.
Or maybe. . .block off your backyard and leave a hose running?
What does the water do?
If you heat it by a poompteenth of a degree will it make a significant difference?
Also. . ., think about what happens in dams and channnels etc when it gets hot.
What happens?
At my place the water level rapidly decreases, sometimes several cm in just one day.
If we have a run of hot weather they rapidly dry up.
We have to keep refilling them with more water.

Not sure what you are driving at Debbie. I understand SD’s point, but there ARE tide gauge records that clearly show sea level rise. The one I linked to is an example. SD is arguing that if there is no obvious SLR at his benchmark, then because the sea is level and aggressively seeks equilibrium, it calls into question any case for SLR anywhere. But it is clearly there in the data.

SD; interesting point about the Geoid which is a distilled gravitational frame of reference; but it deals with endogenous gravitational effects, which are dynamic; it does not consider exogenous gravity such as that produced by the moon; while that may be constant the effect of lunar gravity will depend on the form of the water on Earth; for instance if there is more water in the oceans the tidal range will decrease; that in turn will redfine the Geoid.

Glad to see you guys considering G and our lumpy flat sided earth re SL and SLmean. Tide is also lumpy hence the hunt for power sites. Turbulence is another factor when considering tide flow through straights but we don’t see much on that form of “surge”

GM, I reckon it’s way too soon for all science on Sandy

coh; your reading too much. Go do measurements for a change.

Tidal analysis

” While the moon’s gravitational force is recognised as the primary influence on tides, there are more than 100 scientifically recognised constituents (called harmonic constants) that affect the timing and height of tides. NTC balances the impact of these specific constituents with analysis of regional factors, such as coastally-trapped waves, to prepare tide predictions for port and harbour authorities, the Royal Australian Navy, and persons and authorities engaged in recreation, tourism, marine resource related industries, coastal development, trade and commerce.”

Glad to see you guys considering G and our lumpy flat sided earth re SL and SLmean. Tide is also lumpy hence the hunt for power sites. Turbulence is another factor when considering tide flow through straights but we don’t see much on that form of “surge”

GM, I reckon it’s way too soon for all science on Sandy

coh; your reading too much. Go do measurements for a change.

Tidal analysis-

” While the moon’s gravitational force is recognised as the primary influence on tides, there are more than 100 scientifically recognised constituents (called harmonic constants) that affect the timing and height of tides. NTC balances the impact of these specific constituents with analysis of regional factors, such as coastally-trapped waves, to prepare tide predictions for port and harbour authorities, the Royal Australian Navy, and persons and authorities engaged in recreation, tourism, marine resource related industries, coastal development, trade and commerce.”

We’re in drought here on the midcoast. It’s worse than somebody-or-other thought! It’s unprecedented in the entire record after 2007. It’s the worst dry spell of any year ending in a 1 and a 3 since 1913. Jan 1 was the driest day of 2013, just nudging out Jan 2. The heat is without precedent in 2013, yet, apart from joining and participating in his local fire brigade, Tony Abbott has done nothing about it today. What a misogynist. I hope John McTernan alerts the ABC about this latest Abbott scandal.

By the way, for those interested in climate extremes, and drought in particular, our region’s driest recorded January was in 1900…but wait! There’s more!

Our driest Feb was in 1939. Our driest March was in 1922. Our driest April was in 1896. Our driest May was in 1957. Our driest June was in 1883. Our driest July was in 1951. Our driest August was in 1919. Our driest September was in 1907. Our driest October was in 1908. Our driest November was in 1926. Our driest December was in 1938.

Our driest year? 1902.

Oh, and every single monthly record for heat was set between 1910 and 1919, except that of August, which was hottest in in 1946.

This was not a local freak which somehow extended over many decades. All of this reflects the half century of rain deficit in much of Australia following the Fed drought. For fire, of course, it’s possible that nothing in world history matches Black Thursday, Victoria, 1851, but the period after the Fed drought, while not free of flood and the usual Australian reverses, was problematic climate change in reality.

For real world climate change, you need real world solutions. Instead, we have extensive plans to waste water, energy, food, infrastructure and money…and we fund this nonsense by gouging more and more of the very coal we are not supposed to use.

I think you people should all take a bex and a lie down. SLs and SLR are bloody complicated no doubt about it, but you’re not going to unlock some new info by quickie observations or dreaming up what could be causing what level or all sorts of anomolies.

I suggest everyone read all the info available from the Q&A from Uni of Colorado or other good sites.

Most of the info you want will be there somewhere, some is due to the change in ocean basin size where the ocean becomes deeper /larger over time and seems to show a lack or sometimes a drop in Sls.
But these are then adjusted for to compensate for this larger area or depth or both. Like I said it’s bloody complicated.

Gav we’ve just had very good seasons for a few years so of course everything is primed for a bad fire season.
Let’s hope we get through the next couple of months without loss of life and not too much property damage. But we’ll need some luck for sure.

Yes cohers, but I hadn’t considered reduced tide range for more water. Interesting. Maybe that’s what’s going on. I am not really into the incrementally small stuff, only the observable, and that has it’s own problems in that MSL can rise [which I wouldn’t notice] thus you get SLR while at the same time the highly observable highest tides can fall.

This could be a reason, that Graeme rightly mentions, for the varying results from tide gauges.

It is interesting that Neil White [Church and White?] from the CSIRO is probably the only Deltoid to even partly agree with me on anything.

While the moon’s gravitational force is recognised as the primary influence on tides, there are more than 100 scientifically recognised constituents (called harmonic constants) that affect the timing and height of tides.

You are slitting hairs gav.
Without the gravitational pull of the Moon and to a lesser effect the Sun there would be nothing for those hundreds of“scientifically recognised constituents” to affect.

Nev, the Elders site still has all our BOM rain info under local climatology, which is a link in fine print. They recently pulled all our temp records prior to 1965, so I don’t know where to go for those now.

But back to a serious discussion of what caused SLR. Was it Napoleon, Jane Austen, or all the noise made by that Beethoven fellow? Okay, so Stockholm SL went down while Brest and others went up. What with Post Glacial Rebound we may never know enough about NH sea levels. Won’t stop our Green Betters from dogmatising, of course. (Nice job by the IPCC “detrending” the Stockholm record!)

I have an idea. Let’s get scientists to study the science of sea levels…rather than the art of linking sea levels to CAGW.

I could say I told you so but in the demolition of SD at Deltiod there was a ref to an interesting paper on Gold Coast inlets by “MIRFENDERESK, H. and TOMLINSON, R., 2008″ that I found suitable for a discussion about non linear tides in shallow inlets.

This is a study that goes well beyond my own recent observations of higher tides impacting on the margins. I still say tide marks here are a valid ref for SLR

“I could say I told you so but in the demolition of SD at Deltiod there was a ref to an interesting paper on Gold Coast inlets by “MIRFENDERESK, H. and TOMLINSON, R., 2008″ that I found suitable for a discussion about non linear tides in shallow inlets.”

Gavin, there is absolutely nothing in any of Hamid Mirfenderesk’s papers that do anything but support my observations.

Are you also of the school that thinks the SLR problem can be reduced by lowering the river [IOW dredging] rather than raising the bridge?

Or that excessive coastal development reduces SLs?

Hamid has done a lot of work in trying to come to grips with future SLR as predicted by the prophets of doom and as you would expect from a scientist working for a city which has an enormous stake in the outcome, he has to pay strict attention to what is really happening.

I talk to him a fair bit and I can tell he is under considerable pressure and he is naturally very cautious in making any statements.

He cannot say there is nothing happening when the so-called state-of-the-art-scientists all say the opposite.

I get the feeling that by not being able to confirm any sort of SLR anywhere in the enormous ocean, broadwater, estuarine, tidal river, tidal canal, sea frontage of that city, he is more uncomfortable than if he could say for example, “well, it appears to be happening a bit here”.

SD I hope I’m not misunderstanding your claims. Simply put, you argue that your local benchmarks shows no high water marks higher than the past. Thus, there is no notable SLR where you are. And as sea level is aggressively level, it follows that there is no SLR elsewhere. is that it in a nutshell?

That’s funny SD,
Privately he admits that nothing significant is happening yet in the interest of keeping his job he needs to say that something could be happening.
Graeme,
How about you invite the deltoids here to discuss this issue?
That way you stop giving them that financial leg up that cohenite pointed out earlier?
I still think from your last question that you have fallen into a bit of a trap.
SD’s main point is that water will always follow the laws of gravity. That’s why it aggressively seeks equilibrium.
So if there is no significant rise in average SL’s, especially in low lying areas, that have minimal obstruction to water, what does that indicate?

Debbie, again I am not sure what you mean. SD argues that his local benchmarks indicate no SLR. However, many tide gauges worldwide clearly DO show SLR. SD is therefore suggesting that while tide gauges indicate SLR, real world obs would seem to indicate otherwise.

There IS significant rise in average sea levels worldwide over the past 150 years, according to the data. I thought SD was questioning that?

I’m not sure what you mean either Graeme.
SD… as far as I can tell…was simply pointing out how bodies of water behave and also offered data from his area… which is coastal, estuarine, substantially urbanised, has developed agricultural areas, is vulnerable to surges from storms and king tides and so on.
It is actually a rather good place to study any alarming effects from SLR as it does have low lying areas there …as well as human infrastructure…and low lying areas would indeed be the first places to see any alarming’ effects from SLR.
It’s not complicated or particularly confusing.
Water most definitely follows the laws of gravity.
That is a CERTAINTY (bold) despite the deltoids trying to ignore it.
SD is correct that it will aggressively seek equilibrium.
That’s before we even get anywher near a discussion about what large bodies of water will or won’t do when the air is hotter.

Just went back to deltoid to see if Gavin really did put up that comment….not there Gavin.
BUT!!!!?????
Good grief!!!!!
No wonder you’re getting confused Graeme.
That Bill dude is almost as funny as Wow.
It is about tides, it isn’t about tides, it is rate not rise then it’s rise not rate……. and anyway:
“we’ll all be roooned said hanrahan!”
If nothing else…. it is at least amusing to read.

Gavin quoted:
” While the moon’s gravitational force is recognised as the primary influence on tides, there are more than 100 scientifically recognised constituents (called harmonic constants) that affect the timing and height of tides. NTC balances the impact of these specific constituents with analysis of regional factors, such as coastally-trapped waves, to prepare tide predictions for port and harbour authorities, the Royal Australian Navy, and persons and authorities engaged in recreation, tourism, marine resource related industries, coastal development, trade and commerce.”

Yes, but I’ve seen the Sun’s effect quoted as 46% of the Moon’s. Also, almost all of the “harmonic constants” are those which affect the strength of the Moon’s pull on the oceans; by variations in distance from Earth and in the angle the pull is applied at (relative to the plane of Earth’s orbit).

“Another factor of fundamental importance is the available water depth. In the littoral zone, the water depth is so small that any heating expansion will be more or less negligible (Fig. 2). At the shore (the land/sea interface), the effect will always remain zero. Therefore, thermal expansion in coast areas will not affect coastal sea level. A misunderstanding seems to exist that water expansion at sea will flood landwards. What is deformed is the dynamic sea level, which is a highly irregular surface due to all interacting dynamic variables.”

Do you agree with him that water of the same temperature and therefore density can maintain a higher level away from the shoreline and somehow ignore gravity?

Tony,
was that a question for me?
My answer is that all things being equal, gravity will win.
Of course there are other forces that can interfere, but gravity, whether it is earth’s, the moon’s or the sun’s holds the trump card every time.
And as I said to Graeme, that’s before we discuss what bodies of water will and won’t do when the air heats up.

Tony,
was that a question for me?
My answer is that all things being equal, gravity will win.
Of course there are other forces that can interfere, but gravity, whether it is earth’s, the moon’s or the sun’s holds the trump card every time.
And as I said to Graeme, that’s before we discuss what bodies of water will and won’t do when the air heats up.

Sorry Graeme for not getting back to you earlier. Had a job to do. Yes, that is right. SLs have not increased at my benchmarks. The hige tides of 60+ years ago reappeared again almost as high around 40 years ago at Cleveland Point but only on one occasion and I can’t recall if there were other outside influences such as a cyclone etc. at that time. The other BMs around Runaway Bay are where we have had a seafrontage for the last 35 years but where I was involved in sales and construction for several years before that. Also I have old sailing mates who have been living in seafronts at Biggera Waters and Runaway bay for up to 48 years who have been home and jetty builders and who really pay attention to tide levels. All this infrastructure is required by council to be built at levels relative to MSL so it is something that you are constantly aware of if you are in that business. The oldest BM at Biggera Waters goes back to 1957, 56 years where a retired boatbuilder mate has had a slipway and those blokes HAVE to be very aware of SLs to run that sort of business. He claims that SLs only get to their old levels if there is a big sea surge coinciding with king tides. IOW, nothing happening.

Biggera Waters and Runaway Bay are about a kilometer from the Seaway entrance so the sea hydraulics are constant and not complicated.

Anytime we discuss this so-called SLR they, like me, are always puzzled as to how tide gauges can be showing SLR when they are not observing it.

I had an of argument about this with Luke. We had to have a survey done on my parent’s property at Chelsea
Vic.
We found that there was not a discernible change in the sea level or the closeness of the shoreline to the property in
over seven decades. The last survey was done only 30 years ago.

Given a difference in accuracy of instruments past and present there was still no significant difference.

Luke grudgingly put forward a notion that closed in bays like Port Phillip can be immune to SLR.

Given my time in Melbourne on various MMBW water treatment projectsI went rooting around for current SL issues. No1 a mere handful of cm rise would hamper all drainage by 30% or a tad slimy behind Chelsea

I may not be full bottle on the sewage treatment system of Melbourne but I was not aware of any outlet near Chelsea or thereabouts.
As I recollect the eastern treatment plant discharges treated water into Bass Strait over a long pipeline.
Correct me if I’m wrong.

As to surveyors and levels, I trust the professionals, not the casual drive by observer with a Baby Box.

Well Gavin,
Water would be isotropic if it travels on perfectly flat surfaces with no geographical obstructions.
That’s why people like us who manage water invest heavily in landforming and why urban water managers use piping and pumping etc.
That’s why we build dams.
However, it doesn’t change the issue under discussion.
If no alarming SLR is noticeable around LOW LYING (bold) costal areas. . . what does that indicate to you?
Or do you believe there is a stronger natural force than gravity that prevents the alarming inundation of low lying coastal areas from alarming SLR?

Historicaly though, most of Melbourn’s sewage was treated on the western side of Port Phillip Bay via the wetlands treatment farm at Werribee. There has been no change in the bay side outfall other than some commercial recycling.

On the eastern side too I had in mind the huge problem of urban run off during periods of heavy rain. In fact a large part of the newer metro area is dead flat and not much above SL. I wonder what price is their flood insurence these days.

I call your tune again. Who is the casual drive by observer you refer too?

Btw I used to calibrate level transmitters in the trunk sewer about the same time that eastern plant was built due to a severe shortage of technical staff. For your info there were several dangers apart from accidents on the long slippery walkways, gas and local cloud bursts. Both officers sent underground have a keen interest in weather forecasts

I dunno Gav?
I’m sure JW will let you know if he feels the need, but this is my thought on the matter
Maybe JW means the person who claimed some personal photos from Tas (I think?) were absolute proof that SLR is alarming and highly observable?
OR:
Maybe JW means it’s the person who went on holidays and claimed he could see absolute proof of SLR from tide marks?

Jan. 2, 2013 — ‘By comparing reconstructions of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations and sea level over the past 40 million years, researchers based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton have found that greenhouse gas concentrations similar to the present (almost 400 parts per million) were systematically associated with sea levels at least nine metres above current levels.’

‘According to the study, sea level stays more or less constant for CO2 changes between 400 and 650 parts per million and it is only for CO2 levels above 650 parts per million that the researchers again saw a strong sea level response for a given CO2 change.’

At the moment its 391 ppm and rising, but can’t imagine it reaching 650 ppm anytime soon.

Those Deltoid characters simply will not address the question of real world obs, preferring instead to look at MSL trends drawn from tide gauge data. On the face of it, tide gauge data should be giving us the actual trends and should reflect real world outcomes.

But there is the matter of SD’s physical obs. It may be he is quite wrong. But what if there were some property of tide gauges and their obs that skews the actual trend? Because really, if sea levels are rising, we MUST see it happening before our eyes at some point. Perhaps because it is relatively slow we don’t?

But here’s a thought. Tide gauges are read every 6 minutes in the data for The Battery at New York according to NOAA. However, the definition for MSL according to the same NOAA site is the “arithmetic mean of hourly heights observed over the National Tidal Datum Epoch. ” So, we either create an average from 6 minute slices, or from 60 minute slices. It’s not really clear.

Now, if tide cycles were perfectly regular and equal in length, that regime would indeed give us accurate numbers. But tide cycles are not. For example, here’s a representative list of times between peaks/troughs for The Battery over a few days:

5:12
6:24
7:00
6:12
5:30
6:06
7:12
6:00
6:06
5:36

Now, it could be possible with these sorts of cycle irregularities that drawing an average from regular time slices might be skewed toward more higher numbers or more lower numbers. For example, imagine a regular cycle of 6 hours to come in, 5 to go out, using hourly slices. We could end up with one or more extra obs of higher values over a 24 hour cycle. Our average would therefore be artificially skewed to a higher value.

If that did happen, could it also happen that this error is a compounding error over time? Equally, depending on the time of the local cycles, we might find significant differences in computed averages for disparate locations if a standard timing regime were followed (eg based on GMT).

Has anyone ever read or heard of any sort of screening/filtering process to avoid that skew? Or do you think it wouldn’t make any difference at all?

However there is an official view re the general public studying high water marks year by year. Simple observations is where all science starts so I can say you lot are too conservative to bother with on a busy day

Gav’s having a lovely time serving up tripe. This is coastal erosion, not SLR and it has always come and gone. Even your hero Neil White isn’t game to make the claim that the Gold Coast is suffering SLR and he hates it when his alarmist statements and predictions aren’t reflected in the real world.

It places the whole credibility of CSIRO in question and rightfully so.

Gavin,
That just means that you’re arguing something is happening.
Neville’s question most definitely asks for what you propose to do about it.
If you are going to use the word DENIALIST…. I suggest you might like to explain what it is that you think people at this blog are denying.
Otherwise Gavin… you are just calling people names and ‘grouping’ people under political banners.
You usually show a little more class than that.

Been checking Tas Fire Service online and there are several fresh outbreaks near our little semi bush block.

1967 seems way back now but that is when I began to notice change in bushfire intensity round SE Aus, and in particular how grass fife threatens all communities after a hot spell. The way from Hobart to Dunalley was littered with burnt out cars then. Some still had bodies so we treated every scene with same respect.

The good thing is this time was those same deathtrap roads were closed for the duration of this fresh horror. These photos tell all.

Here you go again Gavin all huff and puff as if the whole world were against you.
Nobody is either making fun of you or denigrating you or being, as far as I can see, abusive to you.
But mate, you have to be reasonable, if you make statements like the following, why are you surprised when others asking questions?

1967 seems way back now but that is when I began to notice change in bushfire intensity round SE Aus, and in particular how grass fife threatens all communities after a hot spell.

Based on what?
Bushfires happened probably long before even Aboriginals inhabited this land and you claim that since 67 “you noticed a change”

Again I ask, based on what?
Do you keep your own records or what records did you use?

SLR?
Forget it it’s not worth bothering about.

Gavin
If you want to be a part of a blog community (any blog) that is not necessarily agrees with your political and social views then you have to be prepared to take a few knocks along the way. Or do you want everyone to furiously agree with everything you say?

I’d be happy if it happened at my place I tell you, just some of the time Pam usually has something else in mind when I think of fun things to do.
No, not that!

Facts will do nicely to win an argument.
Anecdotes are fine in the pub.

SD, for what it’s worth i think you have a point, but it si unlikely that the Deltoids would ever admit it. Me, I’d like to see some examples of similar long term benchmarks to yours and how they compare to tide gauges.

That aside though, what’s your view of the tide gauge records. I have now spent a lot of time looking at NOAA and PSMSL data and very clearly there is SLR in that data.

What’s your view on those records?

By the way for anyone interested, David Benson on Deltoid agreed that my calcs for the SLR affecting Sandy’s storm surge were probably a fair claim. By my reckoning, it’s unlikely there was more than 2″ additional sea level for the tide of the day at the time of landfall. I’m not claiming that my numbers are the absolute truth, but I AM saying that SLR had little impact on the extent of the storm surge.

If you said to me gav, that say, 50 years ago you lived in a house by the bay and the king tides came to within a foot of the top of the sea wall but today they cover the lawn and you told me where that house was, I could verify your claim and if it was right I would agree with you.

I have given you numerous benchmarks like above. Even a photograph on a posting of Jen’s last year.

You could ring up Hamid Mirfenderesk at the Gold Coast City Council and ask him why he didn’t mention SLR in any of his papers on the GC Waterways.

But you would not even have to check if you paid attention because you would be aware of what’s going on.

Graeme, no doubt there are more tide gauges around the world that show SLR than falling SL but I dont pretend to understand how TGs record sea levels or whether they all do it the same way. Theoretically SLs can rise by having an increase in MSLs yet still have a fall in highest SLs.

I really don’t know what to believe about TGs, only about what I see and I see huge seafront cities like Brisbane and the Gold Coast and all the seafront suburbia in between unaffected by SLR and no official claim that SLR is occurring.

Actually I take that back about Sandy. I should have noted that the degree of SLR I calculated was only since 1960. If we went back further we may find a larger value, all I was trying to identify was whether the claimed acceleration in SLR is recent decades had contributed substantially. Of course, SLR since say 1870 might be a totally different story…

Sylvania Waters, not far from where I grew up in Carss Park, was built on a swamp during the 60s. At the time, we were surprised it was so flat and so close to sea level, requiring on-going dredging.

It’s all still there, of course, and the Shire aspirers are still paying a fortune for the address. Bit like the Maldives, really, with RE value trumping climate alarmism. Catastrophic SLR is real or unreal, according to what you’re buying or selling.

It’s just that the market for climate beat-ups is bigger than anything right now.

“Graeme, no doubt there are more tide gauges around the world that show SLR than falling SL but I dont pretend to understand how TGs record sea levels or whether they all do it the same way. Theoretically SLs can rise by having an increase in MSLs yet still have a fall in highest SLs”

It’s a complex subject and open to misinformation and spin – from both sides of the AGW argument. I’m content to simply “tell it like it is” and let others do the arguing. However there’s no doubt in my mind that sea-levels are rising in general; that is they’re rising a lot in some locations like parts of the western Pacific and NW Australia, static or falling along the west coasts of both north and south America, and a mixed bunch elsewhere, including the rest of Australia. A great deal of “cherry-picking” goes on in some research papers and in blogs and across the ‘net. I base my overall picture on “eyeballing” (as a filter, not as an absolute determination) around 800 gauge records online at PSMSL, and charting and analysing about 200 of those that have a long enough record to reveal anything, and where that “anything” might be significant.

I’ve checked specific areas worldwide against the satellite record, and in general, there’s agreement as long as an identical period is extracted from TG records to do the comparison. Comparing the satellite record of late 1992 to present against records for the whole or most of the 20th century, or the last 50 or 100 years isn’t valid. Compare like with like, and location against location, or the comparison’s totally invalid; rates vary on a decadal basis, and vary widely from place to place.

My conclusion from all this is that the likely current global rise is something over 2 mm/year, but almost certainly less than 3. That’s less than the published satellite records show in graphical form, but as I said, I can see few discrepancies of any size between the latest satellite maps and gauge records. Interestingly, IPCC AR5 shows the current “satellite rate” at around 2.5 mm/year – rather less than the 3.1 or 3.2 shown in graphical form on the ‘net. It may be that my assessment is closer than my methodology might guarantee. I’ll answer your query about the gauges and recording thereof in a later post, to keep this one to a reasonable size.

The oldest type of gauge is the “stilling-well” type – a vertical tube securely mounted, and with the bottom at a position and depth guaranteed not to “dry out” at extreme low tide. The tube has a small inlet just above the base to restrict water flow in and out. This effectively damps the effects of waves and wash from passing boats, hence the “stilling” in the name. There’s a float attached to a thin woven wire or un-stretchable nylon or similar cord . The idea is that it’s very flexible yet expands/contracts little, if at all. The cord is maintained at constant tension, wrapped around a drum above the well, which rotates one way then the other, as the water level rises and falls. The recording medium used to be a pen recorder which produced a continuous trace on a long chart with time and date markings, wound around drums, driven by clockwork, later a precision electric motor with speed control (picture a large barograph).

Later still the drum produced an analogue electrical signal which could be recorded on the chart, more recently recorded on mag tape. These days virtually all such gauges produce a digital signal which can be recorded and stored locally and transmitted by cable or satellite link at intervals. These days the same type of well can be adapted to use sound waves or radar bounced off the water surface, precisely timed and with allowance made for the temperature and humidity of the air within the well, which affects the time between emission and reception.

An alternative is the “bubbler” gauge in which nitrogen gas is allowed to bubble into the water column near the bottom. Because the water pressure at the gas valve depends on the height of the water column above it, the rate of escape of the gas can be measured and used to calculate the height of the surface of the water in the well. Recording and transmission use the latest methods. Some radar gauges are simply fixed to a bracket over the water on a pier or jetty. They’re easier and cheaper to install and maintain and are less likely to suffer disturbance or damage if Italian cruise ships are in the vicinity.

Increasingly, installations have a co-located GPS receiver which processes GPS signals continuously, hence CGPS. The averaged height and N-S, E-W readings are stored locally and transmitted to a recording station via satellite. Movement of the CGPS receiver and hence the gauge can be calculated from the data.

The SEAFRAME sites maintained by the Oz National Tidal Centre (Adelaide) at Darwin, Broome, Hillarys, etc. use CGPS, but the equipment is located on a stable land surface which might be anything from a few tens of metres to several km from the gauge. The intention is to monitor movement of the land and not the gauge directly. The relationship between the height and position of the gauge and the CGPS station is regularly checked by levelling and laser-ranging every few years, using up to 20 or so benchmarks scattered between the gauge (which has at least one close by) and the CGPS station which has several of its own. The whole process of levelling and recording can take upwards of a week. The gauges record sea level every six seconds, averaging over 6 minutes (also recorded) when the data is transmitted via satellite to Adelaide. The installations also record, store and transmit water temperature, air temperature and barometric pressure though at less frequent intervals.

Similar installations with CGPS are maintained on the Pacific islands such as Tuvalu, Kiribati etc. I understand that the levelling process can take much longer there, though I can’t imagine why (!).

Given it has become extreemly difficult for me to remain on the blog despitea new back lit keyboard and larger monitor, why bother.

Nrv’z loose comment “criminal waste” makes me sick again as it should apply to so many other things generally associated with our consumerism. SD offers no background re his old marks but slams all others begining with satelites. Both have developed a superior attitude to all climate science and Deb clucks about righ tbehind them.

My bushfire theme has been a long cruisade but I can see results from the CRC and research down. Even the arson issue is addressed now with a watch on both veterans and fresh volunteers.

More recently a slow down in the Tas timber industry with fed assistance should take the heat out of that long running resource battle. Everybody is now aware of blatant exploitation, miss magement and coverups prior to the down turn in chip values. Likewise the MDB reforms proceed

Views expressed here wont have the same impact. so I can retire

btw handy cat sleeps on the mouse, keyboard and my right arm, sometimes all three, she will miss the blog

Since nobody has much of a clue why sea levels began rising in the first half of the 19th century, and since nobody has any clue at all about whether the trend will continue or what sea levels will be in the future, we should put SL in the same basket as climate. The basket is labelled “Don’t Know Yet”. Because of Scientism and Publish-or-Perish and other such barbarisms, learned people are discouraged from admitting they don’t know things. Pity, since that’s been the basis of Science and Enlightenment and all sorts of good stuff.

Looks like it’s back to dogma and obscurantism…complete with crappy windmills!

Thanks for that explanation Tony. Most informative indeed. I have been looking at NOAA and PSMSL data records all over the place and doing a variety of plots and agree that tide gauge records do show SLR in many locations (although the extent of land movement relative to gauge values isn’t exactly clear to me)

I do wonder what observations like SD’s, which accord generally with my own in an anecdotal sense, might mean. I have come to the conclusion that for my own local area, a rise of around 200mm over 100 years is probably not detectable against the noise of the tidal variation. Any negative impact is more than likely noticed first with drainage systems and I certainly haven’t investigated those.

But there still do seem to be plenty of real world obs that seem to suggest little has happened, so I don’t know what to say about those. In SD’s case, looking at PSMSL records for the nearest gauges shows very little change over the term of the records, so it is possible those regions have been experiencing less than global average SLR.

The point about aggressive sea level equilibrium seems valid but I don’t have anywhere near enough knowledge to judge how solid such a claim might be. It seems sensible to expect that if sea level is rising over time in one place , it should be doing that everywhere – in other words, the longer the period of obs, the more likely SLR should become apparent in all other locations.

Perhaps in SD’s case, a long enough period has not passed for the overall effect to become noticeable against local variability.

But really, I have no idea – SD’s point just seems to make sense and I don’t know what to think of that in light of tide gauge data.

Well Gav I’m sorry you’re having problems with your eye sight, mine isn’t what it used to be either.

But I do consider that belonging to the 15% of effort to sign up to Kyoto 2 is a criminal waste as well because simple maths tells us there is zero we can achieve by doing so.

In other words I don’t claim superior understanding or IQ but I do apply plain common sense and simple logic and reason.

There is NO EXCUSE for us banging our heads against logic and reason and simple maths when we must know we are wasting all that time and countless borrowed billions $ decade after decade for a guaranteed zero return.

You may not care about health care, plus research , hospitals, schools and education, better and safer roads all types of new infrastructure etc but I do.

A co2 tax is indeed a criminal waste of money, time and resources and signing up to Kyoto 2 is as well. Not my opinion just simple maths.

You’ll note that this is only about 150 klms from the Fremantle SL gauge. But how did these wrecks end up inland under a car park and all that sand after only 170 years when we are supposed to be suffering from SLR in that area? Interesting.

Gavin,
of course it applies to many other things!
Gee Whiz. . . how about you at least stay relevant?
I totally agree this is not the only example of poor fiscal management.
However, that does not somehow make it OK or acceptable in this particular case or any of the other particular cases.
Spending public money for a demonstrably poor return is not a good fiscal policy in any particular instance.

“Perhaps Graeme would like to give us his opinion on this story about American whalers found buried under 5 to 6 metres of sand after being wrecked on a beach near Bunbury WA about 170 years ago.”

I would have no opinion, I don’t know anything of the area, it’s tidal arrangement, land subsidence rates etc. But near where I lived as a kid the Cherry Venture ran ashore in a cyclone, and it’s sat there ever since. Maybe 30-40 years or so? I used to spend a lot of time on the beach there, and over time the ship rusted down but also sank into the sand. Weight and the constant movement of sand due to tidal movements. I daresay some sand buildup also occurred.

My best guess? That beach where the whaler ran aground has pretty strong currents and perhaps a large tidal range. Over time, it sank into the sand, and the region also experienced sand buildup. I’ve never read anything about sand movement, but one would assume that with SLR, one might also get increasing beach height as more sand is deposited. Not always, but you’d imagine it could sometimes.

Graeme,
I think you may have missed the essence of that question from Neville and answered a different one.
Perhaps you’ve been hanging out with the deltoids too much?
They seem to be really good at pretending to answer a question by answering a different question.

Debbie: “I think you may have missed the essence of that question from Neville and answered a different one.”

I don’t think so. I said I had no real opinion. There would be many factors involved at that location and I know none of them. Coastal topography over time is affected by more than simple SLR. I would think that coastlines change all the time due to changing currents etc. Large storms can affect channels, bars and so on and totally change the coastline and deposition rates. That’s not anything to do with SLR.

Simply put, just observing two facts doesn’t tell us anything about the relationship between the two, or to a third fact. I’m not missing anything, or avoiding anything. I simply don’t know.

Tony Price, thanks for the info on gauges; the other thing is the really accurate modern gear which takes into account land movements as well as sea level is only a bit over a decade old, and typically with the newer equipment contradicts AGW.

Nev; we currently do an eye goo session 4 or 5 times a day with 2 types of gel and as neither melt for hours every screen word is a blob of many mmmms.

Something tony wrote about instruments used as tide gauges bothered me. Bubble tubes would be the last straw in liquid level apparatus. Trust me, I had routines for those at many industrial sites and often used to make them to keep instalation costs down.

Typically they used compressed air via a flow regulator to create back pressure from a liquid in the storage vessel. Some form of transducer is used to convert back pressure to liquid depth. Air is simply the process isolator but it can be tricky to manage the small flows required at the bubbler.

“just observing two facts doesn’t tell us anything about the relationship between the two, or to a third fact” All measurement requires the use of standards in practice and typically 3 is enough to overcome uncertainties.

This is the reason SD’s marks and claims wont wash in polite societies used to references.

‘The large contrast between warm maxima and cool minima resulted in the mean diurnal temperature range being the third-highest on record. The more extreme years of 1994 and 2002 also saw severe drought over most of Australia.’

Anyone interested in bushfire science should see this photo taken by “Chug” 4th Jan from a plane leaving Hobart Airport.

Please note at full resolution; in the atmospherics, a smoke ceiling and high turbulence. On the ground; dryness of grass lands, ratio of grass to bush and sea on the horizon both sides of the Tasman Peninsula.

Gav, when you live where I live, right on a big forest, you’re very interested in bushfire. Some people in the city also take an active interest in bushfire. Tony Abbott has been personally and deeply engaged for many years, hasn’t he?

Now would be a good time to thank those very busy people who sacrifice precious weekends, evenings and sleep to keep us safe. People like Tony Abbott.

Most summers we get the meteorological situation where we get a considerable high or string of highs in the Tasman sea that push a good easterly gradient onto the Qld coast that then turns south and southwest to warm the southern states and capitals. This becomes a heatwave that dries those those areas out and rapidly sets the scene for bad fires.

It has always been happening and this year wasn’t as bad as some.

It seems somewhat of a disconnect somewhere that there isn’t more prevention. You would think that after three years of good seasons and fuel build-up, this would have been a top priority.

It’s quite sinister how the GetUp Left wait for some extreme weather – which MUST come – and then attribute exceptionalism to the current conditions, either indirectly or by repeated implication. When confronted with the facts of past extremes they simply play deaf and adhere to the program.

Unlees you guys can go to msm and make your statements on their show where the general public hear you at this dangerous time for property owners and firefighters, in fact any body; I will continue to call you completly out of touch

btw, its not me saying unprecedented or extraordinary, it’s our country’s professional advisers, national and state by state. So far no lives lost and that’s going on to be unprecedented if they get us through this heatwave as it goes on

If any of our country’s professional advisers are saying “unprecedented”, tell them they are outrageous frauds – and be glad it is not you who is peddling such an obvious and easily exposed lie. And don’t give these climate hucksters oxygen by quoting them, especially the arch-polluter Garnaut.

By the way, I’m writing from the middle of the Australian scrub. After five champion years of growth, it’s a huge piece of luck that the conditions are not nearly as bad as 19 years ago.

Yes Robert, when they claim that the highest recorded temperature in Birdsville is 49.5c and their records only go back to the 1950s for temperatures but to the 1890s for rainfall you know they are fiddling the books. I have experienced higher temperatures than that at a station called Planet Downs near Birdsville in 1957.

We know their excuse is that thermometers were not always housed in official Stevenson screens so they don’t count but they were housed in houses where women and children lived and the odds were that those houses were cooler than SSs. And SSs were used from around the 1890s in many places anyway.

The Australian has a sensible, reasonable article on the heatwave.
It’s behind a paywall so here it is:

AS the winds turned to the northwest yesterday, the nation’s heavily populated eastern seaboard finally got a taste of the sweltering conditions that started in Western Australia at Christmas and have roasted the red centre for a record-breaking spell.

City newspapers warned of “Armageddon” as the bushfire danger in NSW reached catastrophic levels, heightened by a build-up of fuel from two cool years of heavy rain.

A weather-obsessed nation has become used to the vagaries of drought that come with El Nino and the flood-inducing La Nina, both of which are determined by sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.

This is supposed to be a neutral, in-between year: the El Nino system that was brewing faltered at the last moment. But you wouldn’t know it from the weather.

The great heatwave of 2013 has been remarkable for its geographic spread, if not maximum temperatures.

National records have fallen for consecutive days of stifling heat.

On Monday, a new national daily average maximum temperature record was set at 40.33C. The previous record of 40.17C dated back to December 21, 1972.

But, surprising as it seems, the maximum temperatures at individual locations have not been particularly out of season.

This may well just be a truly Australian summer. But it does pose an age-old question: what is normal when it comes to weather?

Karl Braganza, the manager of climate monitoring at the Bureau of Meteorology’s National Climate Centre, says this has been the sort of weather system that typically is associated with heatwaves in the middle of summer, especially across southern Australia. But the heat has been exacerbated by the monsoonal trough that usually brings cloud and rain in the north of the continent remaining far offshore in the Timor Sea.

A stationary high-pressure system over Australia has allowed heat to circulate over the inland, and with no respite from monsoonal cloud or rain, temperatures are building upon themselves.

Despite this, Braganza says the current event “is not notable for the size of individual temperature anomalies. It is notable for its size, as almost the whole continent is warm,” he points out.

“It is more typical for parts of the continent to be significantly cooler when we have a large heatwave.”

But is it climate change at work?

“We have broken the record daily average temperature over the whole of Australia set at 40.17C in December 1972,” Braganza says.

“We have gone six consecutive days with the average (national) temperature over 39C and that has never happened before, and we expect that will go seven days all up (including yesterday).

“There are aspects of the heatwave that are at the very edges of what we have experienced in the past, but in terms of individual sites I don’t think this is the sort of event like Black Saturday,” he says.

“We can’t really pull apart all the influences of the climate system to say what caused this particular event.

“With this sort of event you have background climate trends and natural climate variability pushing in the same direction.

“It is the frequency of these events we are watching.”

For climate-change watchers it is more the frequency of events than the severity of this particular event that matters. The prospect of more frequent heatwaves has become a core concern.

Australia’s Climate Commission has said Australia can expect to experience an increase in summer heatwaves that pose a danger to agriculture, health and even life.

A commission paper on the health impacts of climate change says there has been an increase in hot days and nights and a decrease in cold days and nights across Australia.

In the past five decades, it says, the number of record hot days has more than doubled.

During the severe heatwaves in southeastern Australia in 2009, when Melbourne sweltered through three consecutive days with temperatures higher than 43C in late January, ahead of Black Saturday on February 7, there was a more than 30 per cent increase in the number of deaths.

Despite the Climate Commission’s warnings it will not be possible for several decades to say with certainty that there is a climate change signal in recent heatwaves, including this year’s hot spell.

In a report on extreme weather last year, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change outlined the difficulty in establishing whether climate change is driving more intense weather.

It says many weather and climate extremes are the result of natural climate variability. “Even if there were no anthropogenic changes in climate, a wide variety of natural weather and climate extremes would still occur.”

The IPCC says it has “medium confidence in an observed increase in the length or number of warm spells or heatwaves in many regions of the globe”.

It also has medium confidence in the projected increase in duration and intensity of droughts in some regions of the world, including southern Europe and the Mediterranean region, central Europe, central North America and Mexico, northeast Brazil and southern Africa.

However, for future projections it says it is “virtually certain” that increases in the frequency and magnitude of warm daily temperature extremes and decreases in cold extremes will occur through the 21st century on a global scale.

It is “very likely” that the length, frequency and-or intensity of warm spells or heatwaves will increase over most land areas.

But, it says, there are three main sources of uncertainty in future projections: “The natural variability of climate, uncertainties in climate model parameters and structure; and projections of future emissions.”

In a counter-intuitive development, Britain’s Met Office this week revised downwards its projections for future global average temperature increases until 2017, based on the use of new computer models.

It now believes that global temperatures up to 2017 will most likely be 0.43C above the 1971-2000 average, with an error of plus or minus 0.15C.

British reports claim the revision means the forecast is for no increase in global temperatures above current levels over the forecast period.

The Met Office had previously estimated the most likely global temperature increase to be 0.54C above the 1971-2000 average during the period 2012 to 2016.

It is all pretty academic for Oodnadatta, in the South Australian outback 1011km north of Adelaide, which has just set a record with seven consecutive days of temperatures above 45C.

A five-day sequence has been recorded three times previously, all this century: in January 2004, February 2004 and January 2011.

However, for meteorologists there is nothing particularly mysterious about the cause behind the extended hot spell.

“Heatwaves over the interior are a common part of summer in Australia and this one is not likely to set individual (daily) state or national records,” Braganza says.

“It has hit some site records, but we are really looking at the duration of the heat in many locations in terms of how unusual this has been compared with previous years.

“It is a function of how stationary the weather patterns are over Australia at the present time.”

This blocking of the monsoonal trough is the key to understanding what has been going on.

A high-pressure system has sat over the Tasman Sea that has allowed heat continually to circulate over the continent.

“That is almost always when you get a heatwave in Australia,” Braganza says.

“The last two years we didn’t see much of it because we had a different seasonal climate influence.

“You can say that for years where you didn’t get a very hot summer in Australia, you probably had less of the weather systems becoming stationary over the continent.

Bureau of Meteorology assistant director of weather services Alasdair Hainsworth says the current weather system has meant the continent has been mostly cloud-free for several months “and it has just got hotter and hotter”.

“The monsoon trough has not developed over northern Australia at all,” he says. “It is still lying to the north of the continent.”

The monsoon trough follows the summer sun as it tracks southwards, but this year it has failed to do so.

The northern monsoon is critical to bringing relief to the central areas and southern capitals.

“Normally we would see the development of the monsoons, which would pump moisture into central Australia to develop cloud and rain,” Hainsworth says.

“We have seen none of that this year, so we have had no rain over central Australia.”

As a result, and in combination with the high-pressure system sitting over the Tasman, the soils are now completely dry, heat is radiating day after day into clear skies and the centre of the continent has built up a record run of high temperatures.

Hainsworth’s forecast is for more of the same.

“Until we see some moisture setting in there and some cloud and some rain, the pool of hot air over the central part of the continent is going to persist,” he says.

The weather patterns that allow heat to build up in the centre of the continent usually bring cooler conditions on the eastern seaboard.

The coastal region got a taste of the hot conditions yesterday as northwesterly winds brought the hot air over the Great Dividing Range.

But the 40C-plus temperatures on the coast are not expected to last long.

“Getting those really hot days – into the 40 degrees Celsius – is less common over the east coast than it is in the southern capitals, where the air is dragged down from the north over the southern states,” Braganza says.

The big question is: when will the monsoon season finally break in the tropics to bring relief to the centre?

A low has been forming in the monsoon trough that has the potential to become a tropical cyclone.

“What we are hoping is as that comes south it is going to drag the monsoon trough down with it,” Hainsworth says.

“And then we will finally get some decent activity to pump this moisture in and provide us with some relief over northern Australia.

The flip side is a tropical cyclone will come close to the coast.

“It is a double whammy,” says Hainsworth.

“We might well get some relief in terms of heat but we are likely to see the cyclone impacting on coastal communities.”

sd, those records, 60 years of them in my region, gave the lie to people like David Jones and Ben Cubby. That’s why they had to go.

The beating up of our current heatwave is also keeping our minds of the fierce cold in the NH, with enormous snowfalls from N. America to Asia. Sadly, the hucksters are now so heavily invested in CAGW that advance is their best retreat.

By the way, I’m amazed that this is my area’s first big heatwave since 2004, and, so far, it’s not nearly as severe. Nine years without a major heatwave! With last summer being the coolest in my memory, I’d say we’re in a mid 20th century pattern. PDO?

I’m not sure we’re off the hook, however, with February to come. It’s important to remember that those wet seventies had a lot of bad bushfire emergencies, as well as some shocking heat. No doubt McTernan/Gillard could come up with a fabulously expensive national fire plan…and proceed to do nothing. But I’d love to hear from a PM who is an active fire brigade member. Fingers crossed.

Now the truth is starting to come out WRT the Tas fires. A story on early AM says that they haven’t been doing their homework as I suggested upthread and to which gav replied: “Pure nonsense SD,”.

After the recent good seasons with terrific regrowth, I have been sweating fire that this is the next scenario and had told my fire warden I was going to burn the mountain to get him fired up. We didn’t get it burnt in 2011 but last winter we got a fairly respectable burn which gave us reasonable protection. I had to prepare all the local firetrails and clear them but it was worth it.

Catastrophic bushfires make me uneasy. They have always made everyone uneasy. When I’m in the middle of one, I’m more than uneasy.

Of course, there’s a subliminal message being delivered, GetUp style. When they can’t say “unprecedented”, they just keep on implying it a dozen different ways, hoping it will sink in.

Australia’s most lethal natural disaster, the Victorian heatwave of 1938-1939, killed 438 people. On top of that, there were the Black Friday bushfires of January 13, 1939, which destroyed nearly 5 million acres, and affected three quarters of the state. Almost as lethal was the Big Heat of 1895-1896. which killed 437, and 47 in Bourke alone. Cyclone Mahina in 1899 is estimated to have killed 401 people. Our next most lethal natural disaster was another heatwave – 246 perished in 1906-1907. After that comes a list of cyclones and heatwaves, all occurring long ago, with the exception of the Black Saturday fires of 2009, which killed 173 people. We live in a dangerous place called Australia. Black Thursday in 1851 and the horror El Nino of the early 1790s should have convinced us all of that.

Pass on these facts to somebody’s ABC. Since they are in the business of informing, they should at first be informed.

You can’t get your message across no matter how hard you try.
All this disaster is exacerbated by the reluctance of the greenies to allow fire reduction burning.
And when brushfires happen they wash their hands and blame it on CC.
Gavin is a mild one compared to the real militants, although he is exposing more and more of his true politics.

Johnathan, alarmists end up needing disasters. Hazard reduction for a continent would be complex and expensive, but when you consider it’s a win for the anti-carbon bedwetters and a win for everybody else, it has to be worth it. The problem is, our Green Betters are notoriously indifferent or even hostile to hazard reduction.

These people of the GetUp Green Left have strange agendas. Every lump of coal burnt is Oz is supposed to be a koala killer – but when four times that quantity of Australian coal is burnt offshore, it’s called a national resource, and seen as a money trough. “Energy efficiency” is Newspeak for domestic waste and high domestic energy costs. Their social model must be 1980s Rumania.

I like coming to Jen’s site because I can rub shoulders with conservation minded people who love the bush and what’s in and around the bush. Our Green Betters are many things, but they are certainly not conservationists.

It is, and if I had any say in it nobody would live in a danger area, just go visit and enjoy.
But this is not in the nature of humans. I keep saying earthquakes are not dangerous if nobody lives where they happen.

I love the bush and what’s in and around the bush. Our Green Betters are many things, but they are certainly not conservationists.

You got that right!
A disaster is a politicians and political activist’s dream. Scare the populace and promise salvation, an age old trick and sadly it still works every time.

Rob; I sugest you won’t see many photos of a “fireball”. We now have two photos from the new year Tasmanian bushfire that give substance to the term “catastrophic” if not “unprecedented” as used to describe conditions in certain areas this month.

JW; as a technician who monitors combustion with instruments and eye, there are factors that change the fuel available in recent bushfires other than climate change. In Tasmania’s case it can be blackberry infestations in all areas close to settlements, In old sheep country like Canberra, its more wild oats than pines now.

My point is about fine fuels in summer crops that feed bushfires like never before once atmospheric combustion is established. Fireballs and tornadoes form in and around the furnace when fierce winds flatten the normal atmospheric structure produced by a large bushfire.

The ember shower is just one aspect as the event changes into to a giant firey dust storm. Back burning in these conditions is not an option given fronts can move close to wind speed.

I saw a safety film on fire fighting strike force survival, produced in the US late 1950’s then shown to our foresters and mill workers, They had prepared a series of ridge top forest clearings in anticipation of airborne teams dropping in during emergencies The idea was to extend each clearing by felling and back burning in the face of wild fire. As the main front approached these poor guys were recorded by fixed cameras as they dug under and covered with space blankets.

Winding on these cameras filmed all but one reviving. Bewildered they were. Nobody had guessed the temperatures or intensity of suffocation from noxous gases and O2 depletion. The mesage was more about prevention than sacrifice.

Interesting comments on photography, gav. There have been lots of fireballs through history, but not many vivid digital photos of them. What were the photographers and airborne news teams thinking back in 1851?

Gav, everybody knows that there is a major fire emergency in SE Australia at present. We all know how to find the ABC on our radios and TVs. Nobody thinks it is a good idea to back-burn in the wrong conditions. Of course a major firefront is far more terrible and powerful than one can imagine: that’s why all those people perished in 1939 and 2009. That’s how a million sheep perished on Black Thursday in 1851.

Me, I watched an old Bogart movie tonight. I’m not interested in looking at fireballs on TV while I’m living in the middle of tinder-dry scrub in the present national emergency. Fortunately, neither the temps nor wind direction have been too bad here, and I’ve done lots of prep. But if you think summer crops are combustible, wait till you see native blady grass near forest fringes go up in flames. It’s napalm.

The present emergency is indeed catastrophic, but you keep trying to endow it with some kind of exceptionalism to make it fit the CAGW script. That’s what I object to, and that’s why I’m contemptuous of GetUp and climate hucksters who climb on every natural disaster to use it as a bandwagon.

I’ll repeat. Yes, it’s catastrophic. No, it’s not at all unprecedented. Got it? Or should I repeat? That’s a yes to “catastrophic” and a no to “unprecedented”. If you come back again with a new CAGW script variation, I won’t mind repeating what I just said. I won’t mind a bit.

Rob; you may not be aware but you falsly accuse me of subscribing to above script since I rarely use that C— concept in discussion nor do I cite that US Citizen’s group.

Roaming for the source for such rhetoric, I came across the Nova post on the US geophys soc post McIntyre feud. Now I am a big fan of Wiley Int pubs and you can quote me on this. See the latest climate science here.

Well said Robert and SD.
Amusingly, my area, Griffith/Leeton was daclared a ‘disaster zone’ yesterday.
Our properties are situated between those 2 towns.
There were 2 worrying fires. Neither were actually inside that zone. Both were eventually controlled without any serious damage.
The only fires here yesterday were from some of our neighbours who were burning stubble with a fire permit.
I think SD’s term “bed wetting” applies rather well on this example.
A little less bed wetting and a large dose of sensible risk management guided by people with practical experience in bush fire management might be a much better idea.
And Gavin, please explain what you think people here are ‘denying’.
As I mentioned earlier. . . . if you are unable to explain what people are DENYING(bold) then you are just calling people silly meaningless names.
I find that a bit disappointing Gavin.
You usually write with a bit more class than that.

The globe warms every day. The climate never stops changing. Global Warming and Climate Change are therefore undeniable. Suggesting people “believe” or “deny” these things is akin to suggesting that people believe or deny motherhood or oxygen. What are we to think, therefore, of those who refuse to give clear definitions to their extravagant claims, but continue to cloak them in vague and benign verbiage? Alarmists hate the label CAGW because it is an accurate and frank description of what they preach. But accuracy and frankness aren’t their thing.

Climate alarmism relies on computational and verbal stunts, well worthy of GetUp and the new political class of spinners, touts, shills and hucksters. There are profits in being a member of this new political class, profits for the likes of Gore, Flannery, McTernan and the arch-polluter, Garnaut.

“A; No, never been “Active” beyond emergency assistance from community callups or SES teams. Was quite busy after events with infrastructure upgrades. Why do you ask?”

Well it’s like this, gav: it’s lovely of you to help out in emergencies following the fire but the human brain is capable of preventing those emergency situations from happening in the first place by paying attention to what causes the problem. That’s what RFBs do if they are doing their job properly. Also, people like farmers with machinery, who know what’s going on around them, often are there long before the RFB, solving the potential problem and doing it at their own expense.

It’s farmers like Debbie that have contributed so much in the past to prevention when there was often nothing else to fill the breach. A lot of that seems to be lost today, particularly in the new, at risk, outer suburbs where many people enjoy life today, including me.

I’m impressed that gav worked to upgrade infrastructure after fires, just as I’m impressed that Abbott gives his spare time to guard our beaches and bush, as well as sacrificing precious holidays to help out in aboriginal communities. More power to such people.

But nothing safeguards like profitable bush industries. Let’s stop preaching about that unspeakable hag, Gaia, and start trusting to our own stewardship. Give the environment back to old Gaia and, once the urban luvvies lose interest, you’ll get a lot of under-funded, fire-prone regrowth infested with ferals and weeds.

Thanks SD,
And yes it is those in outer suburbia who are at most risk.
They clearly don’t understand what is meant by ‘risk management’.
They want the beauty but without the terror but just don’t seem to get that it is up to them to properly manage the terror.
Us hokey farmers see incredibly stupid stuff like thick stands of gums towering over peoples’ rooftops and clogging up their driveways and therefore their escape routes.
We see centralised rules that lock up national parks and leave them prone to large fuel loads and impassable logs over fire trails.
These national parks often border straight on to suburbia.
We see river country management that allows river red gums to grow like noxious weeds.
I could go on forever about this one but I’m sure you get the drift.
That criticism obviously excludes you SD!!!!
Gavin seems to partly understand that but is still missing the basic problem with bush fire risk to life and property.
Certain weather conditions that we had earlier this week are certainly a factor, but we can’t manage the weather!
We need to manage the risk from fuel loads.

“Tomorrow morning, Sat 12th Jan at ~ 9.45 am there is another king tide, possibly the highest tide of 2013.

If any of you Deltoids would care to meet me at the Cleveland Lighthouse, Cleveland, Qld., you can observe for yourselves whether SLR is occurring. The Sea should be reasonably free of external influences and if the tide exceeds what the same tide did on a regular basis [ie cover the lawn there to a depth of about an inch] ~ 70 years ago, we can say that SLR is happening. If it is the same or lower than it was then we can say SLR has been postponed.

NB this benchmark is not in a river estuary it is in a wide open bay with about a 50 nm fetch to the shipping channel.

Why would they confuse the nice cosy, fuzzy feeling inside with nasty facts?
Even if they lived nearby, and I’d say some must do, there is enough of them to go around and pollute the land,
they still wouldn’t go or if they did they wouldn’t believe their own lying eyes.

Well SD, I’ve had a rather long ‘discussion’ at Deltoid and also read a lot of stuff. To be honest, I thought the concept was rather clear. But after lots of arguments and name calling, I think I will have to call it quits. As I said once before, I must be far dimmer than I thought because your idea of a BTP seems quite obvious and in keeping with the notion of the geoid and MSL. I did do a fair bit of reading of introductory texts on geodesy and that was a bit above my paygrade – there’s some wrinkles to the notion of the ellipsoid and the geoid that I can’t quite fathom (cool pun huh?).

But it seems clear from most of what I read that the concept of the geoid derives from the fact that if the oceans were free of local perturbations, then the sea would settle to the perfect geoid – that is, a surface perfectly level to gravity at each point. So your notion of the sea ‘seeking equilibrium’ certainly makes sense even if the terminology is not quite right.

As it is, local perturbations amount to little more than 1-2 metres over the geoid, which is pretty much what you said. That sounds like a billiard table to me. What is very interesting is that originally, it was imagined that the MSL would form a very regular figure (because MSL was thought to be perfectly ‘level’) and there was some surprise when we got satellite measurements that showed the geoid actually varies by some 200 metres over its surface. Even so, MSL still follows the geoid quite closely.

At one stage in the comments, a few of the Deltoids tried to argue that MSL varies from the geoid by up to 200 metres which shows an erroneous grasp of the concept. Neil White suggests that were we able to measure the geoid in say 1870, then the derived geoid would not be the same as today’s, but I think he misunderstood what I meant. In fact, pretty much all of the time they seemed to deliberately misunderstand me. A very strange experience.

That said, tide gauges DO show SLR at various worldwide locations. Interestingly, SE Qld gauges for the past 20-30 years exhibit little overall variation, perhaps even a decline, EXCEPT for the past few years. So, my best guess is that SLR over 150 years amounts to about 200-300 mm globally, and that variation is well within the bounds of the known variation of MSL to the geoid. So I suspect that 150 years just isn’t long enough for SLR at its current relatively leisurely rate to rise above the noise of the larger signal.

I will go out on a limb and predict the king tide you observe WILL actually equal or exceed previous benchmarks.

SD; have you ever attended a bushfire scene in my regions, ACT, Vic or Tasmania where people with tiny holdings struggle with risk of fire from neighbours and vice verca? Green bashing from your distance or NZ is just too easy, isn’t it?

Your kiwi blog features a great pic of somebody’s property burning by the railway, no date, no place or connection with the recent infernos. It’s certainly not connected to greens or townships featured say on ABC (no rail to Dunalley and few trains anywhere). My impression; Midlands Hwy Launceston area and dry sheep country with nothing green between the plataues

Good grief, now they seem to have completely agreed that SD’s BTP idea is actually right. Yet I am pretty sure that about 1000 comments ago they were viciously asserting he was nuts for saying it. The only difference is that I’ve agreed that it probably doesn’t say anything about SLR… That’s some kind of alternate reality, right there.

Graeme, I admire your persistence and politeness. There are so many at Deltoid that haven’t got a clue yet they are well educated [on some things] but love to spread confusion from their ignorance on this subject.

Look forward to hearing what you find. I’d love to see tide gauge data for SE Qld for the past 250 years, which of course we can’t have. My suspicion about today’s tide is fuelled by the fact we’ve had several years of La Nina and warm waters off Qld and so one could expect to see higher water than usual./ Tide gauges seem to show that, especially the one for my old stomping grounds, Urangan.

As for the Deltoids, well… they seem smart enough at times but deliberately misdirecting about what seems perfectly obvious. I am pretty sure that where we started is quite at odds with where we ended but they seemed convinced that they’d proved their case. I shall reread the whole thread when I get a few moments.

I still think your idea of the sea tending to equilibrium is right and that SLR should show up everywhere, but I suspect that the noise of the local perturbations damps it on shorter time scales.

Basically, tide gauge data must be right, or there must be some systemic error in the way we measure. Given lots of smart people have been looking at this stuff for a while now, I think we have to agree that the gauges are generally correct.

But I really can’t see this acceleration we should have had since about 1940…

I went to have a another look Graeme…. (sorry Cohenite),
It seems that in their insane rush to argue with you and SD… they didn’t double check their own previous comments….and basically shot their own arguments down.
I’m still not sure why you bothered though?.
There is no good standard of behaviour maintained there. I suppose that would be the moderators’ faults? Imagine Jen putting up with that sort of language and spite? Or the moderators at Jonova’s site?
That Wow dude and a couple of others look to be suffering from some type of manic or bipolar disorder. The swearing and name calling is unbelievably rude.
A couple of the less nasty ones did start to very grudgingly concede you might possibly have had a valid point…..sort of.
For what it’s worth Graeme…..your comments exhibited far more consistency and common sense than all the intellectual bed wetting …(I love that bed wetting description SD!)….that they persist with.
I didn’t notice your link above there….are you going to link it for them?
Or maybe not? John Sayers and JW and a couple of others said that they would just go straight into some character assassination like they did with Humlum earlier.
There is a part of me that agrees with what Mark A said earlier.
I think I want my half hour back.

I’m glad you thought that they shot themselves down, I was starting to think that I was imagining that. As I say, it’s like some sort of alternate reality. After some reading, the basic concept became pretty clear to me, even though the detail is way over my head. But there really seemed a lack of understanding of the concept as far as I could see. I even posted quotes from geodesic texts on university websites and they disagreed with them.

As for moderation, I suspect if I’d gotten as personal and nasty as they do, I’d have been banned.

“They must have dredged the shipping channel more than we thought and let all the water out”

I like!

SD all this navel gazing an highfaluting contemplations can be replaced by simple logic, I admit neither common sense or logic is in abundance these days when it comes to CC.

Given the shape of the earth and the bottom of the oceans being very uneven, the slightly differing gravitational force creates bumps and troughs in the sea.

The fact is that more water is not going to accentuate the overall sea level difference between different areas of the sea.
It will spread out eventually but the percentage difference will still be the same.

So one cannot say it is rising too much in one place but not in others, there must come a time when the level reestablishes itself.
How long is this time?

SD, when I was looking into beach abuse back in the 80s (after witnessing the disgraceful annual vehicular tear-up of beaches around Seal Rocks), I read a theory that the north east of Oz was gaining sand naturally, while the south was losing it. I have no idea if that was so, or if it could have a bearing on SL where you’ve been monitoring, but it’s worth mentioning.

Here’s why one cannot win with our Green Betters:

The current cold gripping nearly all the northern hemisphere is being confidently explained as an effect of melting ice caps and CAGW. The reason to despair is that word “confidently”. These people have got religion. They don’t even blink. Every contradiction is immediately explained away with the blissful certainty of true faith.

No wonder hipsters like zombie movies. They are themselves Gaia’s good little zombies.

Well done Ken – this week has been very interesting regards the BoM and their predictions and statements. I’ve also been following up their statements.

David Jones, Head of BoM stated:

“Yulara, 85km west of Curtin Springs and in the shadow of Uluru, has already experienced its longest-ever recorded run of plus-40 days, (12 days)with every day this year above 40C and eight days above 44C.”

In January 2011 Yulara had only 10 days out of 31 that were below 40 degrees and were consecutive above 40 degrees from the 14th through to the 30th! (17 days)

Dr Jones said “recurring temperatures in the high 40s recorded in towns such as Oodnadatta and Marree in South Australia’s north this year were “one in 20-year values”.

At Marree in January 2006 there were only 3 days below 40C. At Oodnadatta in January 2011 there were only 7 days below 40C with the 14th through to 31st consecutive apart from the 18th which was 39.8C.

Posted this before and made a mistake in my email addy so it went into moderation, if Jennifer is away it it’s unlikely to appear so here it goes again, slightly modified to get around the “duplicate post” error.

Gavin said,
“Two thoughts for starters, Gaia was the form that gave us endless opportunity and SD’s tide mark was made in a vacuum.

JW; great watching your gradual appreciation of raw nature. No system was ever perfect at any instant and time is the unifying factor”

Gavin, may I ask why you make assumptions about people you don’t know anything about, never met and unlikely to do so?

I’m coming from a farming family and worked on our farm till I was 18 and occasionally helping out after, till it was sold.

Anyone living or working on the land and want to be successful at it, needs to be in tune with nature. Know its gamut of offerings, its bounty and caprice expect the drought and floods.

Working against nature makes you undone sooner or later.
You like anecdotes Gavin, here is one for you, in the seventies we had some bumper seasons, plenty of rain and warm weather.

I kid you not, the grass was so tall you could only see the top half of cattle grazing. Some had cut hay twice.
Anyway we had a neighbour who bought a 1000 acres next us. He doubled his stock and boasted about it.

A year later he spent his days for weeks on end driving his cows up and down the long paddock trying to save them from starving.
He virtually could not give them away, there was a long waiting list at the abattoirs. Not working with and appreciating nature does that to you.

One does not have work the land though, you can live on the top floor of a high rise in the centre of a city and still be more appreciative and knowledgeable of nature and its beauty than some greeny zealots, who never even have a chance to piss against a tree trunk, living their entire existence talking about saving nature but never visiting.

An other thing Gavin, stop referring to Gaia as some living caring being. You almost worshipping it.
Don’t know if you are a religious man but I tell you if you feel the need in your life for faith you would do better joining one of the old time religions.

Some even have pomp and ceremony, most have nice social gatherings, you’d enjoy that Gavin, and all you have to do is what you are doing now, have faith and believe!

Or if you don’t want real religion you can join the Uniting church, God doesn’t play a major role in their lives, they hardly acknowledge and seldom mention Christ and they firmly believe in AGW too. Would suit you right down to the ground.

But what ever you do Gavin, stop assuming that you are the only one knowing about and loving nature.

An other thing while I’m at it, I absolutely hate and am sick of hearing the word “unprecedented” describing any climatic event.

We have documented records for events worse than the current one and it’s still described as such.
Lets face it we have what, 500 years of reliable records if that?
And yet we have the nerve call any storm bush fire or other natural disaster as unprecedented.

He proposed that water is created within the mantle and our underground aquifers are fed from below, not from water seeping down from above ground. The hot water coming up through submarine vents are also coming from the mantle thus adding to the amount of sea water.

John,
there are many others proposing the same thing and extending the theory further to oil and more.
Don’t have the links at my fingertips at the moment but if you are interested it is well worth the time investigating.

There was an infrequent poster here Louis Hissink I think who knew more about it.
Anyway it’s a fascinating idea and quite plausible, I always regarded the water on earth being derived from crashing ice asteroids as some suggested, as SF.

Thanks for that John. His points on the methane coming from the early Artesian basin and his description of the under-ocean earth’s crust make you think. The thinness and flexibility of that crust will always interfere with SLR predictions. As he says, knowing that models can’t quantify all these unknowns makes their predictions foolish. The physics of abiotic water is a bit beyond me but I’m happy to accept the possibility. As JW says Louis was into the theory of the electric dynamic universe.

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About Me

Jennifer Marohasy is a scientist, author and speaker.
Dr Marohasy has a PhD from the University of Queensland, worked for twelve years as a researcher for the Queensland government, then six years as environmental manager for the Queensland sugar industry, and then six years as a senior fellow at the Melbourne-based Institute of Public Affairs. She is currently an adjunct Research Fellow at Central Queensland University funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
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